'Let's not be hypocritical,' laughed Amal Bahrudi. 'We have no such hesitations with the enemy. We're not killing “valuable fighters”, we're killing innocent people quite properly to make the world listen, a world that's blind and deaf to our struggles, our very survival.'
'By your almighty Allah, now you're the one who's blind and deaf!' spat out Azra. 'You believe the Western press; it's not to be questioned! Of the eleven corpses, four were already dead including two of the women—one by her own hand for she was paranoid about rape, Arab rape; the other, a much stronger woman not unlike the marine who attacked Nassir, threw herself on a young imbecile whose only reaction was to fire his weapon. The two men were old and infirm and died of heart failure. It does not absolve us from causing innocent death, but no guns were raised against them. All this was explained by Zaya and no one believed us. They never will!'
'Not that it matters, but what about the others? Seven, I believe.'
'Condemned by our council and rightly so. Intelligence officers building networks against us throughout the Gulf and the Mediterranean; members of the infamous Consular Operations—even two Arabs—who sold their souls to sell us into oblivion, paid by the Zionists and their American puppets. They deserved death, for they would have seen us all die, but not before we were dishonoured, made caricatures of evil when there is no evil in us—only the desire to live in our own lands—’
'That's enough, poet,' broke in Kendrick, looking over at Yosef and the boy terrorist who longed for the arms of Allah. 'There's no time for your sermons; we have to get out of here.'
'To the embassy,' agreed Azra. 'Through the pipeline.'
Kendrick walked back to the Palestinian, approaching him slowly. 'To the embassy, yes,' he said. 'But not through the pipeline, just to the gates. There you'll send in the message to your sister spelling everything out for her. With those orders my job is finished here and so is yours—yours at least for a day or two.'
'What are you talking about?' asked the bewildered Blue.
'My instructions are to take one of you to Bahrain as soon as possible. It will only be for a short time, but it's urgent.'
'Bahrain?'
'To the Mahdi. He has new orders for you, orders he won't trust to anyone but a member of the council.'
'The airport's watched,' said Azra firmly. 'It's patrolled by guards and attack dogs; no one can get in or out except by passing through interrogation. We'd never make it. It's the same on the waterfront. Every boat is flagged down and searched or blown out of the water if it does not comply.'
'None of that has stopped your people from coming and going through the pipeline. I saw the results in Berlin.'
'But you said “urgent”, and the pipeline is a twenty-four to forty-eight-hour process.'
'Why so long?'
'We travel south only at night and in the uniforms of the Yemen border garrisons. If we're stopped, we say we're patrolling the coastline. We then rendezvous with the fast, deepwater boats—supplied by Bahrain, of course.'
'Of course.' He had been right, thought Evan. The southern coast as far as Ra's al Hadd and beyond to the Strait of Masirah was open territory, a cruel wasteland of rock-filled shores and inhospitable interiors, heaven-sent for thieves and smugglers and above all for terrorists. And what better protection than the uniforms of the border garrisons, those soldiers chosen for both their loyalty and especially their brutality that equalled or bettered that of the international desperadoes given sanctuary in Yemen? 'That's very good,' continued Amal Bahrudi, his tone professional. 'How in Allah's name did you get hold of the uniforms? I understand they're unusual; a lighter colour, different epaulettes, boots designed for desert and water—’
'I had them made,' interrupted Azra, his eyes on the valley below. 'In Bahrain, of course. Each is accounted for and locked up when not in use… You're right, we must go. That truck will reach the camp in less than two minutes. We'll talk along the way. Come!'
Yosef had placed the bound, injured young terrorist across the road, calming him and giving him quiet but firm instructions. Azra and Kendrick approached; Evan spoke. 'We'll make better time here on the road,' he said. 'We'll stay on it until we see the headlights coming up from the valley. Hurry.'
Final words of encouragement given to their fallen colleague, the three fugitives started running up the curving ascent to the flat ground several hundred feet above. The terrain was a combination of dry, scrubby brush weaving over the mostly arid earth and short, gnarled trees encouraged by the night moisture blown in from the sea only to be dwarfed by the windless, blistering heat of day. For as far as their eyes could see in the moon's dull wash, the road was straight. Breathing hard, his barrel-chest heaving, Yosef spoke. 'Three or four kilometers north there are more trees, taller trees, much more foliage to hide in.'
'You know that?' asked Kendrick, unpleasantly surprised, thinking he was the only one who knew where they were.
'Not this exact road, perhaps, although there are only a few,' answered the blunt, older terrorist, 'but they are the same. From the sands towards the Gulf the earth changes. Everything is greener and there are small hills. Suddenly, one is in Masqat. It happens quickly.'
'Yosef was part of the scouting team under Ahbyahd's command,' explained Azra. 'They came here five days before we captured the embassy.'
'I see. I also see that the entire Black Forest couldn't help us when the light comes up, and Oman isn't the Schwarzwald. There'll be troops and police and helicopters combing every inch of ground. There's no place for us to hide except Masqat.' Evan directed his next words to the man called Blue. 'Certainly you have contacts in the city.'
'Numerous.'
'What does that mean?'
'Between ten and twenty, several highly placed. They fly in and out, of course.'
'Call them together in Masqat and bring me to them. I'll choose one.'
'You'll choose one—’
'All I need is one, but it must be the right one. He'll carry a message for me and I'll have you in Bahrain in three hours.'
To the Mahdi?'
'Yes.'
'But you said—you implied—that you don't know who he is.'
'I don't.'
'Still, you know how to reach him then?'
'No,' answered Kendrick, a sudden hollow pain in his chest. 'Another insult but more readily understood. My operations are in Europe, not here. I simply assumed that you knew where to find him in Bahrain.'
'Perhaps it was in the note you destroyed in the Al Kabir, a code—’
'There are always emergency procedures!' broke in Evan harshly, trying to control his anxiety.
'Yes, there are,' said Azra thoughtfully. 'But none that ever directly involve the Mahdi. As you must know, his name is spoken in whispers to only a few.'
'I don't know. I told you, I don't operate in this part of the world—which was why I was chosen… obviously.'
'Yes, obviously,' agreed Blue. 'You are far away from your base, the unexpected messenger.'
'I don't believe this!' exploded Kendrick. 'You receive instructions—no doubt daily, don't you?'
'We do.' Azra looked briefly at Yosef. 'But like yourself I am a messenger.'
'What?'
'I am a member of the council, and young and strong, and not a woman. But I am not a leader; my years do not permit it. Nassir, my sister Zaya, and Ahbyahd; they were appointed the leaders of the council. Until Nassir's death the three of them shared responsibility for the operation. When sealed instructions came, I delivered them but I did not break the seals. Only Zaya and Ahbyahd know how to reach the Mahdi—not personally, of course, but through a series of contacts that lead to him, get word to him.'
'Can you make radio contact with your sister—over a secure frequency or perhaps a sterile telephone? She'd give you the information.'
'Impossible. The enemy's scanning equipment is too good. We say nothing on the radio or the telephone that we would not say in public; we must assume it's one and the same.'
'Your people in Masqat!' continued Evan rapidly, emphatically, feeling the beads of perspiration on his hairline. 'Could one of them go inside and bring it out?'
'Information concerning the Mahdi, no matter how remote?' asked Azra. 'She'd execute the one who sought it.'
'We've got to have it! I'm to take you to Bahrain—to him—by tonight, and I won't risk our sources of operating funds in Europe because I'm held responsible for a failure here that isn't mine!'
'There is only one solution,' said Azra. 'The one I spoke of below. We go to the embassy, into the embassy.'
'There's no time for such complications,' insisted Kendrick desperately, terrified now of being discovered. 'I know Bahrain. I’ll choose a location and we'll call one of your people here to get the word inside to your sister. She or Ahbyahd will find a way to reach one of the Mahdi's contacts. There can't be any mention of either of us, of course—we'll have them say an emergency has arisen. That's it, an emergency; they'll know what it means! I'll fix the meeting ground. A street, a mosque, a section of the piers or the outskirts of the airport. Someone will come. Someone has to!'
The lean, muscular young terrorist once more was silent as he studied the face of the man he believed to be his counterpart in far off Europe. 'I ask you, Bahrudi,' he said after the better part of ten seconds. 'Would you be so free, so undisciplined, with your financial sources in Berlin? Would Moscow, or the Bulgarian banks in Sofia, or the unseen money in Zagreb tolerate such loose communications?'
'In an emergency they would understand.'
'If you allowed such an emergency, they would slit your throat with a shearing knife and replace you!'
'You take care of your sources and I'll take care of mine, Mr. Blue.'
'I will take care of mine. Here, now. We go to the embassy!'
The winds from the Gulf of Oman swept over the scrubby grass and the gnarled, dwarfed trees, but they could not prohibit the sound of the persistent two-note siren in the distance coming up from the desert valley. It was the signal. Conceal yourselves. Kendrick expected it.
'Run!' roared Yosef, grabbing Azra's shoulder and propelling his superior forward on the road. 'Run, my brothers, as you have never run before in your lives!'
'The embassy!' cried the man called Blue. 'Before the light comes up!'
For Evan Kendrick, congressman from the ninth district of Colorado, the nightmare that would live with him the rest of his life was about to begin.
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 9
Khalehla gasped. Her eyes had been suddenly drawn to the rearview mirror—a speck of light, an image of black upon darker black, something. And then it was there. Far away on the hill above Masqat, a car was following her! There were no headlights, just a dark, moving shadow in the distance. It was rounding a curve on the deserted road that led to the twisting descent into the valley—to the beginning of the sands of Jabal Sham where the 'escape' was to take place. There was only one entrance to and one exit from the desert valley and her strategy had been to drive off the road out of sight and follow Evan Kendrick and his fellow fugitives on foot once they had broken out of the van. That strategy was now void.
Oh, my God, I can't be caught! They'll kill every hostage in the embassy! What have I done? Get out. Get away!
Khalehla spun the wheel; the powerful car swung around on the soft, sandy earth, leaping over ruts on the primitive road and reversing its direction. She slammed her foot on the accelerator, stabbing it into the floor, and within moments, her headlights on high beam, she passed the car now rushing towards her. A figure beside the astonished driver tried to lunge down, concealing his face and body, but it was impossible.
And Khalehla did not believe what she saw!
But then she had to. In a sudden moment of utter clarity she saw it was so right, so perfect—so unmistakably perfect. Tony! Fumbling, bumbling, inarticulate Anthony MacDonald. The company reject whose position was secure because the firm was owned by his wife's father but who was nevertheless sent to Cairo, where he could do the least damage. A representative without portfolio, apart from hosting dinner parties where he and his equally inept and boring wife invariably got drunk. It was as though a company memorandum had been tattooed on their foreheads: Not permitted in the UK except for obligatory family funerals. Return flight tickets mandatory. How perfectly ingenious! The overweight, over-indulged, underbrained fop in sartorial plumage that could not hide his excesses. The Scarlet Pimpernel could not have matched his cover, and it was a cover, Khalehla was convinced of it. In building one for herself she had forced a master to expose his own.
She tried to think back, to reconstruct how he had snared her, but the steps were blurred because she had not thought about it at the time. She had no reason whatsoever to doubt that Tony MacDonald, the alcoholic cipher, was beside himself at the thought of travelling to Oman alone without someone knowledgeable beside him. He had complained several times, nearly trembling, that his firm had accounts in Masqat and he was expected to service them despite the horrors going on over there. She had replied—several times—with comforting words that it was basically a US-Israeli problem, not a British one, so he would not be harmed. It was as though he had expected her to be sent there, and when the orders came she had remembered his fears and telephoned him, believing he was her perfect escort to Oman. Oh, just perfect!
My God, what a network he must have! she thought. A little over an hour ago he was apparently paralysed with alcohol, making an ass of himself in a hotel bar, and here he was at five o'clock in the morning following her in a large blacked-out car. One assumption was unavoidable: He had put her under twenty-four-hour surveillance and picked her up after she had driven out of the palace gate, which meant that his informers had unearthed her connection to the sultan of Oman. But for whom was the profoundly clever MacDonald playing out his charade, a cover that gave him access to an efficient Omani network of informers and drivers of powerful vehicles at any hour of the day and night in this besieged country where every foreigner was put under a microscope? Which side was he on, and if it was the wrong one, for how many years had the ubiquitous Tony MacDonald been playing his murderous game?
Who was behind him? Did this contradictory Englishman's visit to Oman have anything to do with Evan Kendrick? Ahmat had spoken cautiously, abstractly, about the American congressman's covert objective in Masqat but would not elaborate except to say that no theory should be overlooked no matter how implausible it seemed. He revealed only that the former construction engineer from Southwest Asia believed that the bloody seizure of the embassy might be traced to a man and an industrial conspiracy whose origins were perceived four years ago in Saudi Arabia—perceived, not proved. It was far more than she had been told by her own people. Yet an intelligent, successful American did not risk going under cover among terrorists without extraordinary convictions. For Ahmat, sultan of Oman and fan of the New England Patriots football team, this was enough. Apart from getting him here, Washington would not acknowledge him, would not help him. 'But we can, I can!' Ahmat had exclaimed. And now Anthony MacDonald was a profoundly disturbing factor in the terrorist equation.
Her professional instincts demanded that she walk away, race away, but Khalehla could not do that. Something had happened; someone had altered the delicate balances of past and impending violence. She would not call for a small jet to fly her out of an unknown, rock-based plateau to Cairo. Not yet. Not yet. Not now! There was too much to learn and so little time! She could not stop!
'Don't stop!' roared the obese MacDonald, clutching the hand strap above his seat as he yanked his heavy body upright. 'She was driving out here for a reason, certainly not for pleasure at this hour.'
'She may have seen you, Effendi.'
'Not likely, but if she did I'm merely a client tricked by a whore. Keep going and switch on your lights. Someone may be waiting for them and we have to know who it is.'
'Whoever it is may be unfriendly, sir.'
'In which case I'm just another drunken infidel you've been hired by the firm to protect from his own outrageous behaviour. No different from other times, old sport.'
'As you wish, Effendi.' The driver turned on the headlights.
'What's ahead?' asked MacDonald.
'Nothing, sir. Only an old road that leads down to the Jabal Sham.'
'What the hell is that?'
'The start of the desert. It ends with the far off mountains that are the Saudi borders.'
'Are there other roads?'
'A number of kilometers to the east and less passable, sir, very difficult.'
'When you say there's nothing ahead, exactly what do you mean?'
'Exactly what I said, sir. Only the road to the Jabal Sham.'
'But this road, the one we're on,' pressed the Englishman. 'Where does it go?'
'It does not, sir. It turns left into the road down to the—’
'This Jabal-whatever,' completed MacDonald, interrupting. 'I see. So we're not talking about two roads, but one that happens to head left down to your bloody desert.'
'Yes, sir—’
'A rendezvous,' broke in the Mahdi's conduit, whispering to himself. 'I've changed my mind, old boy,' he continued quickly. 'Douse the damned headlights. There's enough of a moon for you to see, isn't there?'
'Oh, yes!' replied the driver in minor triumph, while turning off the lights. 'I know this road very well. I know every road in Masqat and Matrah very, very well. Even the unpassable ones to the east and to the south. But I must say, Effendi, I do not understand.'
'Quite simple, my boy. If our busy little whore didn't head down to whatever and whomever she intended to reach, someone else will come up here—before the light does, I expect, which won't be too long now.'
'The sky brightens quickly, sir.'
'Quite so.' MacDonald placed his pistol on top of the dashboard, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a short pair of binoculars with bulging, thickly coated lenses. He brought them to his eyes and scanned the area ahead.
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